Massive Blast in Lebanon

portlandatheist said:
This is exactly what I was wondering. Why was it being stored so close to a large population?
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There are rules. For one, there are rules about the amount of such material you can store in one place or transport in one vessel. If you see certain tanker trucks on the highway with tanks much smaller than the truck could haul, it's because you can't move too much of whatever it is at once. There are also rules about what different types of material can be stored together. Like we weren't supposed to have an combustible fuels colocated with ammunition or rounds for the grenade launchers.
 
BobTheCoward said:
What was that building right next to it that was still standing?
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Grain silos, from what I could tell. The walls to the side of the explosion are gone, and the mass of grain would have protected the far walls to some degree. Let's just be thankful they weren't flour instead of whole grain.

eta: Darn, I should have refreshed the thread first. Well and truly ninja'ed.
 
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Question: How would this material be stored in bulk? Would it be in open piles, like sand at a quarry? Metal shipping containers? Big bags? Barrels? How would it have been transported from the freighter? Seems like storage conditions would have to be a major factor in the explosion.
 
Bob001 said:
Question: How would this material be stored in bulk? Would it be in open piles, like sand at a quarry? Metal shipping containers? Big bags? Barrels? How would it have been transported from the freighter? Seems like storage conditions would have to be a major factor in the explosion.
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I wondered the same thing. I have not seen it explained so far.
I imagine it was just in a pile but I don't know. It's often kept in bags.
 
Belz... said:
This is clearly the government's fault for not doing anything about it over all these years, and they seem to be looking for someone else to blame.
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There ought to be an independent investigation. I'm not sure "the judiciary" is a disinterested third party here.
 
Belz... said:
This is clearly the government's fault for not doing anything about it over all these years, and they seem to be looking for someone else to blame.
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How is this "clearly"? There's a lot we don't know about what realistic options they had and constraints they were working under.

I think it's reasonable to expect that someone will figure out a way to blame somebody at some point, but just because life hands you lemons it doesn't follow that you're in a position to make lemonade and you're wrong if you don't.
 
arthwollipot said:
I've seen a photo with piles of bags, like chaff bags.
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I saw one like that too, but it was a file image. Not the particular pile of ammonium nitrate that went boom.

If you know where there's an image of the ammonium nitrate in question, would you mind posting the link?
 
Belz... said:
Well, we know the port authorities have been trying for years to get the judiciary to move the damn cargo away from the port, so blaming the former seems like a way to cover for the blunders of the latter.
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Has anybody been blamed yet? My understanding is that the port managers are under house arrest or similar while people try to figure out exactly what happened. This seems reasonable. Even if senior government officials are culpable for not acting (which is not yet clear), there's still the immediate problem: It didn't blow up for six years. Then yesterday it blew up. What changed? Who changed it? If port manager Alice spent the past six years coming up with a scheme to sell some of the cargo on the black market, and her partners screwed up the handling, that's good to know.

Anyway, we don't have a lot of information yet, let alone a lot of facts. You seem to be inferring quite a bit about who's blaming who and where the actual blunders are... So yeah, I don't think anything is very clear yet.
 
Puppycow said:
If that's the case, it was some epic, truly epic incompetence / indifference. Because the port authorities were writing letters begging the judiciary to have it re-exported for years.
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Doesn't every country have examples like that? Where the (local) government was or is aware of a dangerous situation, but it's expensive to do something about it, so they do nothing in the hope it'll go away or become someone else's problem?

I can think of two examples here in the Netherlands, the worst being Enschede, where a fireworks storage warehouse was built away from the city, then a new suburb was built on the nice empty grass around it. That went well until it didn't. It was known, but moving it involved a lot of hassle.

A similar tale about a gunpowder mill in the village where I grew up. When it was built it was outside the village. But that grew up to it. It took 4 smaller and larger explosions before someone finally decided that maybe the economic worth no longer outstripped the danger.

And those are examples in a rich country with the means to deal with the situation beforehand where the owners were clear.

Lebanon is poor, and as said, international cargo that is abandoned is a total legal quagmire. Sure, your theory of intentional delay because it *might* be sold to terrorist is possible, but everything points to it being at the bottom/middle of a large pile of problems with those involved hoping it would go away on it's own. Stupid, yes, but along the lines of Three Mile Island/Chernobyl
 
Puppycow said:
... I suppose it could be incompetence and indifference, but maybe someone with influence over the decision didn't want it moved out of the country because they had something else in mind. Something like "Hezbollah can possibly use this as a weapon against Israel". But not if it is re-exported or used to fertilize crops. So they kept it where it is and ignored the pleas to have it moved. I don't think it's a bizarre conspiracy theory. Granted, the incompetence / indifference hypothesis was my first theory too and it could be the correct one. But military groups like Hezbollah do like to stockpile weapons for future use, so that's not such an outlandish idea either.
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The highlighted is absurd given the total picture. When were they going to use it? Another decade?
 
"Two documents seen by Reuters showed Lebanese Customs had asked the judiciary in 2016 and 2017 to request that the "concerned maritime agency" re-export or approve the sale of the ammonium nitrate, which had been removed from cargo vessel Rhosus and deposited in warehouse 12, to ensure port safety."

Steve said:
“to ensure port safety.” :eek: :jaw-dropp That sure worked as planned.
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I first read that as saying it was deposited in the warehouse to ensure port safety, but reading it again, taking careful note of the placement of the commas, it's clear it was the "re-export or approve the sale of the ammonium nitrate" bit that was expected to ensure port safety. And would have done, if it had happened.
 
The local news did before and after satellite pictures tonight. The exact location of the warehouse is a seaside hole full of water. The entire port facility is utterly destroyed, most buildings are just gone.

Amazing power in that explosion.
 
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